Relationships Among Test Anxiety, Evaluative Experiences, and Achievement Motivation of Children in Grades 2 Through 6. Final Report and Appendices.

Hill, Kennedy T.; And Others

This research seeks to develop a theory of children's achievement motivation and to move research in the direction of greater educational application. Five studies demonstrate that: (1) high anxious children function very poorly on basic arithmetic skills in conditions involving time pressure and some failure but do almost as well as low anxious children when time pressure and failure are removed; (2) interfering effects of anxiety on performance at achievement test items can be reversed in testing conditions maintaining time limits and involving failure if children's criteria and expectancies for success are modified; (3) anxious children spend a good deal of their time off-task in a verbal learning situation, with such off-task behavior directly related to poor performance at the task; (4) high anxious children will avoid taking risks on a design completion task and children in general will take less risk if later evaluation from an adult is expected; and (5) both high and low anxious children can process the information communicated by nonreaction from an adult in an evaluative situation if the adult is evaluating another child. Research indicates that motivational factors are important determinants of learning and performance. (Author)